New Testament history

The Jewish and Hellenistic matrix

Background

The historical background of the New Testament and its times must be viewed in conjunction with the Jewish matrix from which it evolved and the Hellenistic (Greek cultural) world into which it expanded during a period of Jewish religious propaganda. It is difficult, however, to separate the phenomena of the Jewish and Hellenistic backgrounds, because the Judaism out of which the church arose was a part of a very Hellenized world. The conquests of Alexander the Great culminated in 331 bc, and the subtle but strong influence of Greek culture, language, and customs that was spread by his conquests united his empire. Jews in both Palestine and the Diaspora (Dispersion) were, however, affected by Hellenism, as in ideas of cosmic dualism and rich religious imagery derived in part from Eastern influence as a result of the Greek conquests. Greek words were transliterated into Hebrew and Aramaic even in connection with religious ideas and institutions as, for example, synagogue (religious assembly), Sanhedrin (religious court), and paraclete (advocate, intercessor). It could be argued that the very preoccupation with ancient texts and tradition and the interpretation thereof is a Hellenistic phenomenon. Thus, what may appear as the most indigenous element in the activity of the Jewish scribes, sages, and rabbis (teachers)—i.e., textual scholarship—has its parallels in Hellenistic culture and is part of the general culture of the times. The thought worlds merged, confronted each other, and communicated with each other.

The Hasmonean kingdom

After Alexander’s death the empire was split, and first the Ptolemies, an Egyptian dynasty, and then the Seleucids, a Syrian dynasty, held Palestine. Antiochus IV Epiphanes, a 2nd-century-bc Seleucid king, desecrated the Temple in Jerusalem; a successful Jewish revolt under the Maccabees, a priestly family, resulted in its purification (164 bc) and in freedom from Syrian domination in 142 bc. This began the Hasmonean (Maccabean) dynasty, which appropriated the powers both of king and of high priest. This reign, which created dissatisfaction on the part of other groups who considered their own claims falsely usurped, lasted until internecine strife brought it to an end. John Hyrcanus II, a 1st-century-bc Hasmonean king, appealed to Rome for help, and Pompey, a Roman general, intervened, bringing Palestine under Roman rule in 63 bc. John Hyrcanus, given the title of ethnarch, was later executed for treason (30 bc), thus ending the Hasmonean line, but Jewish independence had come to an end by Roman occupation.

Rule by the Herods

The Herods who followed were under the control of Rome. Herod the Great, son of Antipater of Idumaea, was made king of Judaea, having sided with Rome, and he ruled with Roman favour (37–4 bc). Though he was a good statesman and architect, he was hated by the Jews as a foreigner and semi-Jew. Jesus was born a few years before the end of his reign, and “the slaughter of the innocents,” young children of Bethlehem who were killed as possible pretenders to Herod’s throne, was attributed to Herod. After his death, Palestine was divided among three of his sons: Philip was made tetrarch of Iturea (the northeast quarter of the province) and ruled from 4 bc until ad 37. Herod Antipas became tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea until ad 39 and, like his father, was a builder, rebuilding Sepphoris and Tiberias before he was banished. Herod Antipas had John the Baptist beheaded and treated Jesus with contempt at Jesus’ trial before him, before sending him back to Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator (ad 26–36) at the time of Jesus’ Crucifixion. Archelaus was made ethnarch of Judaea, Samaria, and Idumaea but was removed by ad 6 for his oppressive rule, and Judaea then became an imperial province, governed by procurators responsible to the emperor.

Two other Herods are mentioned in the New Testament: Agrippa I (called “Herod the king,” ad 37–44) had James, the brother of John, killed and had Peter arrested; and the last of the Herods, Agrippa II, king of Trachonitis (c.ad 50–100), welcomed the procurator Festus (c.ad 60–62), who replaced Felix (c.ad 52–60) for the trial of Paul.

In ad 66–70 there was a Jewish revolt while Nero was emperor of Rome (54–68). When he died and was succeeded by Vespasian, his former army commander (69–79), the siege and final destruction of Jerusalem occurred (ad 70). Before this event, Jewish Christians had fled, perhaps to Pella, and Yohanan ben Zakkai, a leading Jewish rabbi, with a group of rabbinical scholars, fled to Yavneh, where they established an academy that gave leadership to the Jews. Under the emperors Trajan (98–117) and Hadrian (117–138), Jews in Egypt and Mesopotamia rebelled and again fought unsuccessfully against Rome in Palestine for forbidding the practice of religious rites, and, under Simeon Bar Kokhba (or Bar Koziba), a Jewish revolutionary messianic figure, the final Jewish war was waged (132–135). After this defeat Jerusalem became a Roman colony; a temple to Jupiter was erected there, and Jews were prevented from entering the city until the 4th century.

When the Romans had entered Palestine in 63 bc, they practiced a relatively humane occupation until c.ad 66–70. They did not interfere with religious practices unless they considered them a threat to Rome, and their rights of requisition were precise and limited.

Jewish sects and parties

From both the New Testament and extrabiblical material the main religious groups or parties in Palestinian Judaism may be discerned. Such descriptions, however, may be somewhat biassed or apologetic. Philo, an Alexandrian Jewish philosopher (died c.ad 40), Josephus, a Jewish apologist to the Romans (died c. 100), and sectarian writings found at Qumrān near the Dead Sea in 1947 that date back to about c. 200 bc and end about ad 70 all provide data about the respective Jewish religious groups in Palestine in the 1st century bc and the 1st century ad. The Pharisees (typically Jesus’ opponents, although his ideas may have been close to their own), the Sadducees, and the Zealots are mentioned in the New Testament. The Essenes were described by Philo and Josephus, but new evidence from their own writings makes their group better understood (i.e., the Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumrān).

The Pharisees

The Pharisees (possibly spiritual descendants of the Ḥasidim [Pious Ones], who were the exponents of Maccabean revolt) were strict adherents to the Law. Their name may come from parush—i.e., “separated” from what is unclean, or what is unholy. They were deeply concerned with the Mosaic Law and how to keep it, and they were innovators in adapting the Law to new situations. They believed that the Law was for all the people and democratized it—even the priestly laws were to be observed by all, not only by the priestly class—so that they actually had a belief in a priesthood of all believers. They included Oral as well as Written Law in their interpretations. Though they did not accept the Roman occupation, they kept to themselves, and by pious acts, such as giving alms and burying the dead, they upheld the Law. Their interpretations of Law were sometimes considered casuistic because they believed they must find interpretations that would help all people to keep the Law. Their underlying hope was eschatological: in the day when Israel obeyed the Torah, the Kingdom would come. The Pharisees were called “smooth interpreters” by their opponents, but their hope was to find a way to make the living of the Law possible for all people. In their meal fellowship (ḥavura) they observed the laws strictly and formed a nucleus of obedient Israel. The Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the dead and had a developed angelology.

The Sadducees

The Sadducees, more conservative and static, consisted mainly of the old priesthood and landed aristocracy and, perhaps, some Herodians. They were collaborators with Rome. They did not believe in resurrection because they found no Old Testament enunciation of such a doctrine. In a way, they seemed to respect the Pharisees in legal matters; but both the Pharisees—because they were a bourgeois rather than a popular movement—and the Sadducees—because they were aristocrats—rejected the ʿam ha-aretz (People of the Land), who were no party but simply the poor, common people whom they considered ignorant of the Law.

The Zealots were revolutionaries who plotted actively against the Roman oppression. That the Pharisees did not react in this way was perhaps because of their belief in Providence: what happens is the will of God, and their free will is expressed in the context of trust and piety in conjunction with an eschatological hope of winning God’s Kingdom through obedience to Law.

The Essenes

Though the Essenes of the Dead Sea Scrolls are not mentioned in the New Testament, they are described by Philo, Josephus, and Eusebius, a 4th-century Christian historian. With publication of the Essenes’ own sectarian writings since the 1950s, however, they have become well known. They did not have any really new ideas, but their founder, the Teacher of Righteousness, believed that he knew the interpretation of the prophets for his time in a way that was not even known to the prophets of their own day. Their withdrawal into desert seclusion was in opposition to the ruling powers in the city and the Temple of Jerusalem. They lived apart from society in constant study of the Scriptures and with a firm belief that they were the elect of Israel living in the end of days and to whom would come messianic figures—a messiah of David (royal) and a messiah of Aaron (priestly). Membership in their group and acceptance or rejection of its founder determined their place in the age to come. After a long period of probation and initiation, a man became a member of this elect community that had strict rules of community discipline that would seal or destroy his membership in their New Covenant. Ritual lustrations preceded most liturgical rites, the most important one of which was participation in a sacred meal—an anticipation of the messianic banquet, to which only the fully initiated members in good standing were admitted and which was presided over by representatives of the Davidic and Aaronic messiahs. From what is known of them, their communities were celibate, living “in the presence of the angels” and thus required to be in a state of ritual purity. Their laws were strict, their discipline severe, and—unlike Pharisees, Sadducees, and Zealots—they were not simply different parties within Judaism but a separate eschatological sect. The Pharisees did have lodges and a common meal, but membership in the Pharisaic party did not, as it did with the Essenes, guarantee a place in the age to come; and the attitude of the Pharisees to a leader or founder was not, as it was to the Essenes, one of the bases on which such place could be attained. Thus, the Essenes—as the early Jewish Christians—were an eschatological Jewish sect. They believed that they alone, among those living in the end time, would be saved. The apocalypticism of the Essenes and the early Christians had many similarities, but the Christians had a higher eschatological intensity because they already knew who the Messiah would be when he came in the future at the Parousia (the “Second” Advent), and they also had a recollection of the earthly Jesus, knowledge of the risen Lord, and the gift of the Spirit upon the church. Both communities lived in an era wherein the cosmic battle of God versus Satan-Belial was taking place, but the Christian community already had the traditions of Jesus’ victory over Satan and the experience of his Resurrection. Both Essenes and Christians were sects with tightly knit organizations, but the church had a historically based messiah. The Essenes probably were killed or forced to flee from their wilderness community c.ad 68, yet some of their ideas can still be traced in the ministry of John the Baptist (who might have been an Essene) and in the thought world of the New Testament (see alsoJudaism).

The religious situation in the Greco-Roman world of the 1st century ad

Hellenistic religions

With the expansion of Christianity into the Hellenistic world either to Jews or increasingly to Gentiles, there were various reasons why the Christian message that spread, for example by Paul, met the needs of the Hellenistic Age and world. There was no lack of religions, but there was a crisis of upheaval, unrest, and uncertainty and a desire to escape from mortality and the domination of unbending fate. There was also a desire to win personal knowledge of the universe and a dignified status within it—i.e., a religious identity crisis. City-states with their cults of civic gods were unstable, because men changed from place to place and the gods of the city were distant from individual needs and anxieties. After Alexander’s conquests, the resulting religious syncretism did not meet individual needs and longings that were increasingly becoming conscious. Many Gentiles turned to Judaism, at least as “god fearers,” and later to Christianity. There were also “mystery religions,” the secrets of which were known only to the initiate, which may have arisen from Eastern fertility cults with their dying and rising gods and were transformed in the Hellenistic Age to cults of a saviour god whose dying and rising gives personal immortality. Such mystery cults often provided meaningful relationships with fellow initiates.

Astrology

There were elements in the Greek world that may have come from the East, partly Egyptian and Babylonian, which gave rise to astrology. The basic conviction of astrology was that the heavenly bodies were deities that in a direct way control life and events on earth. An older idea of tychē, or “fate,” originally signified the chance element in the universe, a capriciousness that increased insecurity. Astrology transformed this into a fate or destiny in which everything is strictly regulated by celestial deities. Man’s problem, then, is that of finding security from overwhelming powers outside human control. One way is to “read a horoscope.” Because the heavenly deities are systematic and orderly according to astronomic observation, this order and regularity can be exploited to see how and in what way events will happen and can perhaps be used or avoided. Another way is to deal with such forces through magic. From the Hellenistic period many magical papyri with formulas for dealing with sicknesses, demons, and other adverse forces have been found. Magic attempts to manipulate and control what affects the world by a kind of participation in the event.

Philosophical solutions

Solutions were also sought in philosophy. Socrates, a 5th-century-bc Greek philosopher, was largely concerned with the search for the “good,” the good life. After Plato and Aristotle, however, philosophical systems sought to supply man’s longing for inward security and stability. These were sought not by an in-depth understanding of reality but by ad hoc constructions—a new dogmatism for providing infallible plans and attaining immediate security—that the age demanded. Those philosophies were crude constructions that gave shelter and were defended by an unyielding dogmatism as absolute truths; if they were proved false, they would remove their promised security. Epicureanism, founded by the Greek philosopher Epicurus (341–270 bc), was basically a philosophy of escape, and its goal was serenity and tranquillity, a negative concept characterized by absence of fear, pain, and struggle. Fate, providence, and the afterlife were eliminated to deny the anxieties they provoked in terms of control, reward, or judgment. Epicurus attempted to meet this crisis by adopting a completely material view of the universe, including the soul, and thereby eliminating interference by deities both in life and after death. He did believe in the gods; but they, too, lived in their own perfect tranquillity, away from the universe. The Epicurean was both self-reliant and at peace with the absence of pain. There was also emphasis on friendship and the development of close communities.

Socrates, herm from a Greek original, second half of the 4th century bce; in the Capitoline …

Zeno, a 3rd-century-bc philosopher, was the founder of Stoicism. Stoicism was a rule of life that held that all reality was material but was animated by a rational principle that was at the same time both the law of the universe and of the human soul. The wise man then could accept and learn to live a life in conformity to this permeating reason without letting anything affect him. He responded to duty and accepted it.

Cynicism was a philosophy that maintained a cosmic view of life with a method of dealing with crisis by reducing man’s needs to a minimum. Later in the Hellenistic period, a group of Stoic–Cynic preachers arose and, in New Testament times, wandered around calling men to repent and change their lives from sin to virtue.

Adaptation of the Christian message to the Hellenistic religious situation

The Christian message adapted itself to this Hellenistic situation of crisis and proved a successful answer: Jesus was proclaimed as Lord and Saviour, Baptism was practiced as a form of initiation and a passage from death to new life, and the Lord’s Supper was celebrated as a sacral meal. The obvious difference between Christianity and the mystery religions is that a historical person, Jesus, forms the center of cult and devotion; his titles came from his Jewish background. Adaptation took place out of the Jewish matrix of Christianity—and Hellenistic terms that were meaningful were also used, such as illumination and regeneration. Such terms are not to be found in the earliest origins of Christianity but in the communication of the Christian message to a new environment. Among the religious and philosophic needs of the time was that of a cult that provided for the needs of the individual along with a community of worship. Christ as Lord was viewed as universal, and his teachings made the universe understandable, as well as providing a basis for ethics. In a period of expansion, all religions are to some extent syncretistic, as is the case of Christianity in the 2nd century. Such a phenomenon belongs to a religion in a time of strength. Though universal, however, Christ was believed to have an exclusive claim, and in this there was security and relief for the anxieties of the period. The church was more than a philosophy; it had a social and enduring structure. It also reached out to all men—not only to those regarded as the best of men. It called them to a new life and gave them a new home and community, the church.

“Jesus Before the Gates of Jerusalem,” manuscript illumination by Liberale da Verona, …